Time and Tide Wait for No One
by karrenia
Summary: An accidental ion storm knocks the slip fighters piloted by Beka Valentine and Tyr Anazasi offcourse, slightly AU, written for a 'send the crew back in time' challenge.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Andromeda belongs to Tribune Entertainment and Fireworks Productions; it is not mine. Written for the Live Journal Community 100situations prompt #17 long hours, Table 3. AU, set around season 2. 

"Time and Tide Wait for No One" by Karen

The formation of the silver-sheathed slip fighters is perfect, Dylan thought as he shifted gears and took his own into a steep dive, signaling to the other members of his crew to do likewise.

Despite a few setbacks during the simulations and during the practice runs, everything was running smoothly, to his way of thinking, there should be no reason to anticipate that anything would go wrong. Indeed, when even Tyr Anasazi would have to set aside his hard-won and instinctive pessimism and admit that the mission would be stellar success.

Over the ship's communication system he heard his second-in-command, Captain Beka Valentine humming in time with the thrumming of her own slip-fighter's engines.

"Forty degree angle and level out," Beka said. "This is for all the marbles, kiddies, the real deal, so don't mess it up like you did in the simulations, big guy."

"I," Tyr gravely replied via the inter-ship communication system, "Do Not mess up."

Roswell, New Mexico, circa 1950's

Somewhere in the outskirts of town lay an United States government Air Force base, long since abandoned by its former occupants and mothballed upon departure, still it had found a new purpose, if not the one its original builders had intended.

Prior to World War II, that had swept over the governments and the populations of both the United States, Western Europe and part of Asia, the base had been a staging ground and billet for members of the Air Force Unit 1800, to house both the troops and their equipment.

More than five years had passed since the conclusion of the war, but the base did not stay abandoned for long.

The base had been designated Area 51 certain factions within the government had found a new use for the old base, one that those factions would very much like that it remained top secret.

To the heads of the unit, the value of those secrets were measured by the number of people from which they must be kept. And going by that yardstick,' General Stanz thought, 'then they are pretty damn valuable.'

General Ray Stanz stood above his assembled troops in a large square room encircled by a narrow catwalk and barked out orders for everyone to come to attention. His aide, Lieutenant Andrew Berkowitz nodded in time to the snapping of hands meeting foreheads in salute and eyed any who even appeared to be slacking or slow to respond.

The alarm klaxons began going in an ear-piercing wail in mid-speech, causing General Stanz no end of personal aggravation. Sure, up until the perimeter alarms had gone off, the past five months could have been summed in one very simple word: humdrum. That was the reason for assembling the troops and the officers for a motivational session, so perhaps he should be thankful that there appeared to be an actual emergency to respond to.

Outside in the desert surrounding the military base, two now severely scorched on the outside and crippled silver craft plummeted down through the blue sky and the cloud cover in a steep arc, its pilot frantically engaging every available tool and mechanical assistance that she conceivably could to bring her slip fighter out its fatal dive.

Beka Valentine never imagined that she would go out like this, if she was going to die in a crash landing, it had always been her beloved Eureka Maru, that she had pictured going up in flames, in a blaze of glory, not in a small one person dart ship. Anger at that thought and with a surge of desperate adrenaline coursing through her veins.

Beka pulled up on the throttle and brought her ship out of its fatal dive, coming leveling out and tearing a large chunk of the arid landscape that she peripherally glimpsed out of her front view screen before turning her attention back to the matter of staying alive,.

Her crash and burn landing left a deep twenty foot swath tear in the desert landscape.

Beka was sweating from the intense heat of re-entry into a planetary landscape, and wondered if that sudden energy spike that her instruments had registered shortly before her brush with death and the plummet toward the planet' su rface below, had caught any one else by surprise. She unbuckled her harness that held her to the pilot's seat and leaned forward to try and raise her crew-mates, Dylan Hunt and Tyr Anasazi.

Tyr did not like it that he could not raise either Captain Hut or Captain Valentine, he too had registered the strange energy spike shortly before his ship's instruments had begun to go haywire, rocking the ship beneath him like a thing alive and in great pain.

He managed to land his own slip fighter, although it meant crashing through the ceiling of ramshackle and to all appearances long abandoned outbuilding a few klicks from a larger complex. He did not recognize the construction nor the landscape surrounding it, but in his opinion, it was very, well, he shrugged his broad and heavily muscled shoulders, primitive. "Where the hell am I?"

Much to Tyr's surprise he got an answer to that question: "Whereabouts are going to be the least of your concerns, whoever you are." a gruff male, and rather irritated human voice replied. Tyr grunted and shrugged, easing out of the tangled mass of metal and plastic that had been his cockpit, and got out of the craft, and onto level ground.

He took stock of his situation, half a dozen humans in old-fashioned military costume armed with projectile-style hand weapons, and much to Tyr's wry amusement, those particular style of weapons had not seen use outside of the Perseid Museum on Centi III, they were practically relics of Old Earth. As that thought flickered through his mind, Tyr considered the possibility that something had gone drastically wrong on the descent into Rualka IV, and they may have been thrown off course by more than a few hours.

"What year is it?" Tyr demanded of the soldiers ringing him around.

"He speaks English," one of the men whispered to the obvious leader.

"Lovely? Hard of hearing, are we?" Tyr continued in a deceptively pleasant tone of voice, arms folded over his massive chest.

"It's 1951," replied the leader. "And might I add, you are trespassing in a restricted area."

Tyr had noticed the non verbal as well the verbal signs given of by the soldiers. It was a matter of course, survival and continued self-preservation was both second nature and an inbred trait of the Nietzcheans; it also made a lot of damn sense.

"1951 of what century?" he tried again.

"The 20th," the man who had whispered about his being able to speak English replied.

"Remind me again, to double check the calculations of a certain would-be crusader, should I ever get my hands on him again," Tyr muttered under his breath.

"Now what?" the leader asked.

"Ah, General Stanz. Correct me if I'm wrong, but does not military procedure states, dictate that any and all civilians or unauthorized personnel being taken into custody and questioned."

"Then that's exactly what we will do," replied the officer addressed as General Stanz. "Berkowitz, Michaelson, check to see if he's carrying any weapons."

Tyr nodded. "I, do, however, have one stipulation to make prior to any questioning."

"Which is?" asked General Stanz

"That your people do not come anywhere near my ship," replied Tyr in a tone which indicated that there was not, would not, and could not be any room for debate on the matter.

"I don't think I've ever seen a ship quite like that," the small sandy-haired mustached human commented as stepped out of the ring of armed soldiers and edged his way over to the crevice created by Tyr's crashed ship.

"It would seem to be beyond repair and as such it could be extremely hazardous to anyone approaching it. As he did so Tyr wondered if his slip fighter alone had felt the systems go haywire, and the subsquent energy surge, followed by the disastrous and jaw-clenched plummet through the stratosphere of the planet. Both Dylan Hunt and Captain Beka Valentine had accompanied on that last mission, and their whereabouts were still unaccounted for.

The last communication he had before his fighter's systems overloaded had been Beka rambling about not messing up the mission, and then nothing but static until the channel went dead.

Interlude

Aboard the Andromeda Ascendant, Captain Dylan Hunt brooded and paced on the command deck of his ship, wondering if the universe had decided to play some kind of cosmic joke. Not only had he lost his entire original crew during the battle of Witch Head in the final battle against the Nietzcheans, during the fall of the Commonwealth, now he had lost both his acting first officer, and his armory and tactical officer. This time, it was not due to anything as simple to blame as an attack, or dereliction of duty, not, of all things, it was simply, bad luck.

In the background Dylan could hear Rommie and Harper discussing the drive thrust mechanisms of the data retrieved from all of the slip fighters's black box sensor logs, which meant only his, and the last few minutes of sensor readings that Andromeda's AI had retrieved before and leading up to the communications blackout when he had lost contact with both Beka and Tyr..

Dylan had barely been able to coax his damaged fighter back aboard the ship, hoping against hope that both Beka and Tyr had been able to do the same. He had had the utmost confidence in their ability to do so. Beka was up there with the all time best pilots he had ever had the pleasure of serving with, and Tyr, well, Tyr was too good at what he did, to have been caught off-guard like that. "Come to think of it," Dylan muttered aloud, "I don't think I have ever seen that man, truly relaxed, or at ease."

Turning his attention back to the Andromeda's avatar, Rommie, he asked the burning question that he had been balancing on a knife's edge ever since the accident. "Where the hell are they?"

Rommie nodded and pretended not to notice or comment on the agitation written into every line of her captain's form and figure, and simply replied. "Unknown at this time, Captain. We have now come several jumps through slipstream away from the planet Rusalka IV, and are continuing to analyze the data. We will let you the moment we find out anything more concerning their whereabouts."

"Boss," Harper added. "Uh, before you wear a groove in the floor I've got something that will lift up your spirits, and to not to dredge a up time-honored clichИ, but I will turn that frown upside down, and it is just groovy."

"Out with it, Mr. Harper," Dylan sighed, realizing as he did so that it did little good to try and curb the young brilliant human acting engineer's enthusiasm for a difficult project or task.

"Well, it's nothing definite, but I think our essential problem of discovering where Beka and Tyr have disappeared to, is not a question of where you see, it is more of a question of 'when'.

"When?"

"You see, after scanning that area of space and running numerous computer models of the anomaly prior and post the big goodbye," Harper grinned. "Thanks to Rom-doll and my own hypothesis, I think we're dealing with a case of temporal displacement."

"Temporal displacement?" Dylan questioned.

"That energy surge, not only sent their slip fighters plunging down, down, down, it also sent our friends back almost a thousand or more years into the past," Harper replied shaking his head ruefully.

"Assuming, for the sake of argument, that you're correct, Mr. Harper," Dylan asked. "How do we get them back?"

Harper sighed and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his orange pants. "That's the tricky part, boss. Harper looked up and then out the view screen at the panoramic scene of the star field just outside. "Unless I miss my guess, they might have to find their own way back., unless..." he trailed off thoughtfully.

"Unless, what? Give me something I can work with here, Mr. Harper," Dylan said.

"Unless we can trace their exact space time coordinates, get there and rig up some sort of device for hooking onto them and pulling them both back to our timeline. That's a pretty big IF, if you know what I mean?"

"Agreed." Dylan sighed. "Do you think that between you and Rommie, you can work up some kind of device?"

"Sure, give me the easy jobs," Harper joked and then his expression sobered into a more contemplative look. "Dylan, do you remember when I rigged up that time machine? I know that it did nott exactly work right, and a lot of innocent watermelons suffered as a consequence, but I think I might able to figure out what went wrong."

"I remember," Dylan replied, thinking in the back of his mind of that time machine, had also meant that he had had a shot at being reunited with his lost love, Sarah, but he was only fooling himself, that such second chances came around more than once. "Do what you can, Mr. Harper. Good luck."

"Thanks, Boss," Harper replied. "I'll get right on it!" Then he was off and out of the com command deck, and down the corridors to the Machine Shop.

Elsewhere

In a square chamber furnished in Spartan-like with one table, several chairs and an antique rotating electric fan, and lit only by a bulb hanging in the light fixture overhead, Tyr was ordered to take a seat in one of the chairs. If he had not already grasped the fact that he had now become as much as a temporal anomaly as Dylan Hunt was in his own time, relatively speaking, he would have found the situation wryly amusing.

"You got a name, big guy?" one of the uniformed men asked as he lifted one end of a lit white stick to his bearded lips and began puffing and exhaling on it.

"You are aware that is a carcinogenic-inducing poison, and it will end up killing you," Tyr mildly observed.

"Yeah, so,?" the other rejoined. "What about it?"

Tyr shrugged and folded his arms across his chest, "Nothing, just making conversation."

"Do you have a name, or are you going to settle for hey you?"

"I am Tyr Anasazi."

"Okay," General Stanz cut in, darting reproving glares at the others in the room. "Care to tell me where you came from, and what you're doing here?"

"That would be telling." Tyr nodded and held eye contact with the general for at least the space of five minutes before the other was forced to turn away and break contact, just a little unnerved from the dark intent stare of the intruder.

"Humor me," General Stanz replied, when he felt that he was back on more or less even ground.

"It is complicated, and I am not at all sure that it would be comprehensible, even to me." As Tyr gave his glib reply he wondered where Captain Beka Valentine was and if she had survived the crash as he had, what she was up to.

Knowing her as well as he did, he could only assume that whatever she had in mind, it usually involved lots of guns and explosions, with the aim of increasing her own gains, usually at the expense of others. Human or not, as a Nietzchean Tyr found much he admired and found merit in the human female.

Meanwhile, the object of his thoughts trotted across the desert, his shoulder laser pistol out of his sheath and grasped in one sweaty palm. Beka did not care for her present situation, but considering that her slip fighter had gone up in flames and smoke, she was left with little choice in the matter. She had lost both radio and visual contact with Tyr, and had set out on foot in order to find him.

"Damn it! Double Damn it," she yelled as her foot caught up in a upsweeping in the unsteady and shifting ground and she tripped to land face down with a mouthful of grit and sand. She spit it out and forced herself back onto to her feet.

Beka stood up and wiped the worst of the detritus from the front of her shirt.  
Her uniform jacket had been too hot to keep on in the dry and humid temperature of the desert, forcing her to take it off and tie it around her waist.

When she looked up again Beka realized that she was surrounded by a group of uniformed men, holding antique looking weapons trained on her. Beka was reasonably sure that the trek across the desert had not robbed her of her well-honed common sense, so they could not have been a mirage, or a trick of the fading moonlight.

"What's up, guys?" .

"Come with us."

"Sure, as long as you guys put away the pop-guns, and take me someplace that has drinking water and maybe a shower?" Beka said in her most reassuring and wheedling tones, her hands spread out in the universal gesture of no-harm, no-foul.

It seemed to work as the uniformed men put away their own weapons.

"I mean no disrespect, ma'am," one of the soldiers said as he fell into formation at the back of the small group. "But, we don't often get women out here and I reckon from ya'all's getup that you got lost from your regiment, am I right?"

"Yeah. I reckon," Beka replied with a grim smile. "Thanks for the save, feller. I've been along time dry," Beka replied, realizing with a start that she really was thirsty, her own supply of drinking water was getting very low. Much longer out here on her own, Beka thought, I really would have began to see things."

"Ma'am, I've been meaning to ask you," the solider with the southern drawl said, "What unit did you get uh, separated from.?

Beka found his diffident attitude both amusing and cute, in certain respects the young man reminded her a little of her brother, Rafe, although without that particular young man's trademark mischief lurking behind the big green eyes.

"Uh, the unit I was with had a top-secret mission," Beka replied, hoping that he would buy it, until she think up a more plausible cover story. "One I can't reveal right now.

"I understand," the young man nodded. "We sent a detachment back there, but your transport, is well," he shrugged. "In a word, totaled."

"Was anyone else with you,? the solider in front of the group interrupted.

For a brief second Beka considered whether it would better policy to lie and say she was alone, wondering where in the name of seven hells, Tyr had managed to lose himself, or if it would be better to tell the truth.

'I wonder if Dylan realizes that we never reached our rendezvous coordinates on Rusalka IV and will come looking for us.'

"The funny thing is, I don't recall the natives speaking with an Old-Earth Southern drawl."

Beka shrugged and then thought, "Ah, well. I guess a lot of things can change in give or take two decades or so."

Beka continued to keep pace with the soldiers and heaved a sigh when they came within a meter or two of their destination, a blockish m wire-fenced in military base, and shoved the stray thought into a back corner of her mind.

They passed through the gate in the fence, closing it behind them, and Beka took a good look around, solid, orderly, but old, old in terms of both construction materials and technology, 'hmm, it appears that these folks have fallen on hard times, or they have deliberately let things go, or are trying to hide from the Magogs, the Nietzcheans, or maybe both. These days, it's getting harder and harder to tell."

Her impromptu escort led her from the exercise yard into the base proper, and then down long metal and concrete corridors to the personnel area, and gave her all the water to drink that she wanted.

Much later and with a few sheepish grins, averted gazes which allowed her to use the shower facilities. When she was finished the guard handed her a spare uniform.

As she got dressed Beka suddenly felt a low thrumming sound that began at the base of her heels and vibrated up through her legs and then moved around to the base of her spine. It tingled, but oddly enough, it did not hurt.

In fact, it felt like being at the helm of her own ship, the Eureka Maru. She had been an experienced freighter and salvage pilot long enough to recognize the signs of a space ship stashed somewhere near, obviously in the lower sections of the base. She smiled, and thanked the young man who had either had orders to be her escort, and followed him as he led the way out of the crew quarters.

In the back of her mind a plan to find a way of this dull rock had begun to form, Step one, find Tyr, Step Two, borrow that space ship and then find their way back to Dylan and the Andromeda Ascendant.

The big snag in implement that plan, however, was that both Dylan and the Andromeda were several thousand years in the future. But Beka was a Valentine and Valentines did not allow little things had temporal blocks get in their way.

Chapter 2: Mutually Assured Destruction prompt #84 destroy


	2. Mutually Assured Destruction

Disclaimer: Andromeda is the creation of Gene Roddenberry and belongs to Tribune Entertainment and Fireworks Entertainment; it is not mine. Note; The story picks up shortly where the previous story "Time and Tide Wait" left off and falls into the AU category. Written for the 100 situations prompt #84 destroy, Table 3. 

"Mutually Assured Destruction" by Karen

Evading the reluctant but quite through vigilance of his her escorts, proved much easier than the she had anticipated. Finding her way through the maze of branching corridors and adjoining rooms proved to be equally simple now that she had a grasp over the military base's layout, and had been given a tour.

While Beka had accepted the fact that she was no longer in her own time-line, she wondered why Harper had been so enchanted with memories and half-amusing and half-charming anecdotes about Old Earth.

If what she had seen of it thus far Old Earth had much to be desired when it came to both amentias and security.

"Still," she thought, "this will make my task easier, but it does make me wonder exactly what they are doing out here? No one needs this much firepower and smoke and mirrors to guard a base out in the middle of the desert."

As Beka rounded a corner and dodged a trio of soldiers approaching from the opposite direction she wondered if she should stay put, or start grilling her 'hosts' for more information on the whereabouts of her fellow time-lost teammate.

"Okay, Tyr, where the hell are you?" Beka shook her head and backed up into a wall to keep out of sight of a pair of guards.

"If only I hadn't lost my guns and lance in the crash. As it is I am going having to make do with these antiquated Old Earth weapons."

Beka lunged out from the wall and nearly body slammed a tall gangly youth with his first growth of stubble on his chin. She almost felt sorry for him, almost but not quite, as she snatched his gun out of his heads and clonked him on the head to keep him quiet.  
That done she quickly took stock of the situation to make sure no one else had heard the commotion and ran down the adjoining hallway, taking a quick left and then a right at section marked R and D.

At the end of that hallway she opened a door marked 'Supplies, that led to a darkened stairwell, and ran down the steps two at a clip.

"Tyr, when I find you, we will have a discussion on the finer points of the concept of royally screwing up," Beka muttered under her breath. Elsewhere Tyr could be found currently straddling the railing of a balcony that enclosed a cavernous floor space, holding the object of the soldiers' attention, and at one and the same time the entire reason for the base's existence. Tyr did not much care how the ship came to be here and did it matter; all that mattered is that he could steal it and make good his escape.

It did occur to him that he should be looking for Captain Valentine, but then he shrugged and figured that she was more than capable of looking after herself. In point of fact, he thought that Beka might actually resent me for coming to her rescue, for a human, she really is quite beautiful when angered; a trait I find most endearing, but at the moment I cannot afford the distraction."

The ship in question twice the size of the Eureka Maru, and much more streamlined and elegant than Beka's barrel-rolling, held together with spit and wire, and damn luck, not that Tyr Anazasi was a believer in luck, much too chancy to trust in something as amphoral and untrustworthy as luck; such things were better left to people like Harper.

Tyr preferred to make his own luck, create his own destiny, and thus he had played a cat and mouse game with his plebian human interrogators, made them believe that that they were in control of the situation. He had require more information about the situation before he could make his move, and they had, if somewhat reluctantly, provided it.

At that moment Tyr could hear the rapid fire sounds of projectile-style weapons being engaged.

It momentarily diverted his attention from contemplating the ship back to his own position. From the ground floor and across from where he crouched, he heard the general shout. "Give it up, you're outnumbered and outgunned. You might as well quit while you're ahead!"

"I suspect that you do not know me as well as you believe you do," replied Tyr quietly.

"You are in a restricted area!" the other man yelled back. "Come down from there immediately or we will open fire!"

Tyr shrugged his shoulders. "I have had some leisure to study the situation.

"Yeah, so what?" the other man replied.  
"Under the circumstances I do not believe that would be the best move."

"What are you talking about," one of the general's subordinates yelled back.

"Would you risk the use of projectile style weapons in here? Tyr asked freeing one hand to point down at the gleaming silver-hulled ship resting on its black matte metal platform so tantalizingly close, yet so far away. "You might conceivably hit me instead of the object that your are so zealously guarding, but I would not wager on it."

With a brief glance at his men, general Stoltz signaled them to open fire and it was in that instant that Beka Valentine burst through the door. It was difficult to say which of the people in that room was more caught by surprise.

The look on Tyr's face was inscrutable even at the best of times, however Beka could have sworn she caught that briefest of flickers of annoyance furrow that noble brow.

The expressions on the soldiers' human faces were much easier to read by comparison: a mix of annoyance, anger, confusion and a little bit of hurt disappointment that she was not what they had believed her to be.

Beka did not much care one way or the other, she did want to get a closer look at the ship, and much like Tyr she saw it as her ticket out of this back water timeline. Beka just knew without having to be told that this vessel was one that had never been built in this era, and she did not Harper's engineering skills and peculiar brand of genius in order to tell her that.

"Captain Valentine," Tyr nodded and with that he released his hold on the railing, propelling himself forward and out into open space above the floor, timing both the force of his jump and rate of descent. Pulling in his legs and arms Tyr descended all of the way to the ground floor rolling and coming back to his feet once more.

"You always did have a flair for the dramatic," Beka muttered, "but was that really necessary?"

"Yes, I believe it was," he replied.

"Okay, kiddies," one of the soldiers interrupted, "Playtime is over."

"Oh, but I just got here," Beka mock-complained and I want to play with your shiny new toy."

"Completely out of the question. This area is off-limits and for a good reason. Now if you would put down your weapons."

"This absurd," Tyr muttered. "Give me that," he added, making a grab for Beka's appropiated gun and then pivoted on his heel and began opening fire in a starburst pattern. "Do not just stand there, make a run for the ship and I will cover you."

"No, give me that, and I'll cover you," she replied.

"Don't argue about this. Do you want to get away from here or not?"

"Ask a stupid question..." Beka muttered and broke out into a sprint, dodging and weaving the return fire, realizing with a start as she approached the ship that either dumb luck or by accident whoever was assigned to guard the ship had left the entrance hatch open. "Considerate of them," she sighed. "Tyr, come on! We are so outta here!"

"Be right there," Tyr replied and began back-pedaling. "You know, I have thought about something and I believe that I will retain this antiquated weapon."

"Whatever for?"

"A souvenir for Mr. Harper."

"Aren'tt you worried that by bringing it back to your our own timeline," Beka sighed as she found the cockpit and began strapping herself into the pilot's seat.

Tyr had by now stepped inside and closed the hatch. ⌠You were saying,■ he prompted.

"Well, Damn it!" Beka griped. "Time-travel makes my head hurt. Anyways, I was just wondering that it might mess up that space-time continuum that Harper and Trance are always going on about."

"Possible but highly improbable," Tyr replied calmly taking the navigator's seat. "In any case I much prefer to let the space-time continuum take care of itself."

"Oh, my bad," said Beka with a sideways grin. "I nearly forgot that you were looking out for number one."

"Captain Valentine," Tyr said mildly. "With all due respect, shut up and fly this ship."

"One little problem, how do we get out of this hangar?"

"Blast our way out," Tyr said and leaned over to press the controls that fired the laser weapons. Through the forward view screen he watched as the human soldiers scattered in all directions. Above their heads the ceiling began to buckle and sway from the energy detonation, finally giving way underneath the pressure, raining debris of mortar, stone, and metal down on the heads of those caught beneath it.

"Do you have an answer for everything?" Beka asked as she powered up the engines and brought the main thruster online, running through the pre-flight sequences just as she would do aboard any other ship.

She felt the ship respond to her touch and rise up, gradually gaining altitude. She liked this ship and it did occur to her in the back of her mind, that whomever had built it, had done so with an eye to detail and maximum stream-lined aerodynamics. Even if they did not manage to get back to their own timeline, once she left Earth-space behind, Beka figured with the right amount of luck and resources, she might make out all right. Tyr, however, might be another problem, but one that she could deal with at her leisure.

With a roar and scream the ship left its platform, the cavernous hangar, and the confusion behind in its wake as it broke through the gaping hole in the ceiling, out in the main part of the base, drawing in its wings to deal with the narrow hallways.

Beka's touch on the controls smooth and assured.

After what seemed like hours, but was probably only minutes, the ship broke away from the military base and out into the open desert air. She gave the ship more thruster power and the ship climbed upwards and gained even more altitude.

"I for one am relieved to be away from that place," Tyr remarked once the base could no longer be seen or heard.

"Me too. Now what?"

"I find it remarkable that an Earth culture this technologically primitive had a space-worthy vessel capable of faster-than-light travel in their possession."

"Yeah, curisouer and curiouser," Beka nodded. "But they don't have it anymore and we do."

"Agreed,. Which leads me to wonder if another alien race has visited Earth before now."

"Only thing I can figure is why they would leave behind a perfectly good space craft?"

"And where are they now?"

"Beats me. I don't know and I don't want to know. I just want to find a way back to our own time."

"Very well. I understand that there is a gravitational anomaly at the center of the Sol System.■ Tyr said after a few minutes of awkward silence stretched out between them.

"In our own timeline, Earth's population was conquered and subjugated by the Nietzcheans," Beka said as she took the 'borrowed' ship into a steep 180 degree dive. Even after piloting the ship for this brief period of time she had come to feel quite possessive of it, but then she realized it was a bit impractical and gave her concentration on keeping them in forward motion.

"Yes, and what is your point?" Tyr asked.

"Nothing, just making conversation." Beka replied not looking at Tyr to see if he would rise to the bait after all that particular scenario was one that had caused more than a little tension between him and her old friend, Seamus Harper. Turning her attention back to her instrument panel and the readings she announced. "We leaving the Earth's upper atmosphere."

"Good. Once we're re away from the planet head toward this system's sun."After a momentary pause in order to contemplating the stars winking outside of the ship.

"Whatever for?" Beka asked.

"Something Harper mentioned once when he was going on about alternate realties and time travel," Tyr replied.

"Oh, really, I thought that you tuned most of that nonsense out," Beka replied.

"Oh, I do. However this is one of his theories concerning time travel, that acutally made sense." Tyr sighed. "I have come to accept that it was happened to us, whether I like it or not."

"Okay, okay. Beka muttered."So we're agreed on that point, but you were saying?"

"Is to use the gravitational force of the sun to slingshot around it."

"Won't that just cause us to burn up?"

"No, not if we do so correctly."

"This way we can travel through time similar to the way we travel through slipstream in our own era."

"I think you and Harper have been spending way too much time together."

"Please do no even make jokes about it. The Little Professor and I have, shall we say, an understanding,": Tyr replied, folding his massive arms over his chest.

Beka glanced at him. "Fine, have it your way. Let's do this, and le's do it right. When we get back I will have the discussions with you that I promised myself that we would."

"What conversation was that?" he asked.

"About royally screwing up," she replied.

"I," Tyr gravelly replied, "Do NOT screw up."

"Yeah, that's what you said right before we got trapped in this ridiculous mess."

"Famous last words," Tyr replied with a small smile. "Dylan would be proud."

"You had to go there?" Beka griped and on the final approach to the shining sun of the Sol System she ran the computations necessary for executing slingshot maneuver around the G2 type star and took the ship into a steep acceleration, hoping against hope that it would work and get them back home where they belonged.


	3. Is that what You Fought the War For?

itle: Is That what You Fought the War For?  
Fandom: Andromeda, general series  
Author: karrenia  
Rating: PG  
Notes: The story picks up shortly after where the previous  
story "Time and Tide" left off. Vaughn and the Icarnians are my own creations.  
Disclaimer: Andromeda belongs to Fireworks Productions and Tribune Entertainment;  
it is not mine.  
Prompt: #39 burn, Table 1

39/100

"Is that what You Fought the War For?" by Karen

In terms of both sheer volume and size, the Andromeda was a big ship, but still boasted sleek lines and a slightly elongated barrel-type roll in her mid-section, and while the hangar was spacious, it still took some very tricky manuvering on Beka Valentine's part to squeeze her new space ship into the docking area.

Beside her old familiar and still beloved freighter, the Eureka Maru, the prize that she and Tyr had wrested from almost eight hundred years ago from Old Earth's past fetched up and made  
her old ship look like a slightly shabbier relative from the country come to marvel at the big city folks for the very first time.

"Would it help if I got out and pushed," snapped Beka when she had completed the tricky docking manuever and shared a weary yet still triumphant grin with her companion.

Tyr arched one black eyebrow at that, and snorted. "At the risk of stating the obvious, it would not even practical nor possible for you to 'push' this craft, anywhere," Tyr paused and glanced around.

"While this vessel, as impressive as it is, did provide us with the means by which to escape from the alternate time line in which we were trapped, what are you going to do with it?"

Beka leaned back in the pilot's seat and reached up and over his head to pillow her head on her folded arms, whistling an off-key tune under her breath while she thought over both Tyr's  
question and the potential questions and arguments that Dylan would more than likely raise when he discovered a huge, alien ship in one of the hangar bays.

"I don't know. I really did'nt think much more beyond getting away from those jerks and pulling away from earth's gravity so we could, what did you call it?"

"Slingshot around the Sol System's sun in order to build enough mommentum to return to our own time line."

"You don't think that anyone from the past could follow us through to our future, do you?"

"Highly unlikely," replied Tyr matter-of-factly," although you might save that particular question for the Little Professor, I have no doubt that such a thing might distract him long  
enough from those experiments he is so preoccupied with at the moment."

"Oh, come on!" exclaimed Beka as she brought one arm up and over to release the clasps on her seat restraint and punched in the codes that would complete docking procedures, while in  
the seat beside her, Tyr followed suit. "You're just mad, that you inadverently once got caught up in one of his experiments."

"As you say." Tyr had finished with the last of his clasps and had risen from his seat and crossed to the exit of the alien ship, "You coming," he asked.

"Yeah, Yeah," replied Beka with another wave of her hand. "Now that we're not getting shot at, Tyr aren't you the least bit curious about the aliens who built this thing and then  
got stranded on Old Earth for all these centuries."

She had also risen from her chair and was now standing beside the bank of blinking lights and monitor screens, running a hand over the smooth veneer of the metal walls.

"Yes, but I would prefer to wait and discuss this with Dylan," replied Tyr in a tone that implied that he was rapidly running out of patience and would like to leave.

"Okay, okay," Beka replied. "I get it, but just think, we could..."

"You would offer him false hope," Tyr chided.

Beka stiffened, arching her back until it was almost ramrod straight while anger twisted her smooth, high-boned features, and Tyr thought that she had never looked lovelier than when she was angry; and in the back of his mind

"What kind of fascination does this human woman have over me?

"Hope, sometimes even it's false, may be the only thing you have to cling to" snapped Beka, but then as rapidly as it had come one she seemed to let it slip away and she laughed.

"For a minute there I thought you were making some kind of slam on the birthdaypresent I got Dylan a while back."

"More or less, but it was not intended in the way you implied."

"I was just thinking if we understood more about this time-travel technology, we could use it for, oh, any number of things."

"Such as?" Tyr questioned.

"Oh, I don't know..."Reunite Dylan with his wife, go back and fix things."

Tyr stiffened, this time with concern and raised one admonitory finger as a caution.

"I am reminded, at this time, of a certain purple-hued friend of ours."

Beka sighed and frowned, running one hand through her blond hair.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Trance would say that there is no such thing as a perfect possible future."

"There are risks in every undertaking. This is one I do not wish to discuss anymore."

With that Tyr keyed in the sequence to open the exit hatch and stepped down the ramp and out onto the floor of the hangar.

Seamus Harper, finding that he needed some kind of an outlet from the frustration of re-wiring all of the Andromeda's electrics after the devestating attack of the Magog, had  
attached a set of jury-rigged anti-gravity charges to a skateboard and had just now found a proper center of gravity atop the precarious contraption when Beka entered his work room.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi, yourself," he replied.

"I'd ask what the hell you were doing, but, to be honest, I really don't want to know the answer."

"Fair enough," replied Harper with a causal shrug. "I've been cooped up in here way too long but Rommie keeps me more or less update on the goings-on around here. I understand  
you got taken along on one of Tyr's extra-curricular activities?"

"Nah, nothing like that, but it's an interesting story. What say, we get your sorry butt outta of here and you come with to the hangar bay?" Beka grinned, and found that  
proverbial look of the cat that ate the canary was mirrored on Harper's face as well.

"Sure! Why the hell not?" Harper hopped down from the improvise floating skateboard and  
made a wide sweep with his arms at the litter cluttering his work room. "It's not like I'm  
doing anything around here!"

"Stop complaining, Harper," Beka said mildly. "I think you'll find that this was worth it. Come on."

"Sure," and Harper followed her out of the work room careful to step around the clutter on his way out the door.

Honestly Harper did not know what to expect when he walked into the hangar bay on Beka's heels. He had ventured guess along the way-anything from nothing to an elaborate prank to  
something that required fixing, but when he saw the sleek lines of the huge oddly elongated slivery-winged ship resting on its own docking pad in the middle of the huge bay; he  
stopped in mid-stride his breathing whistling in and out of his lungs.

"Well, I'll be damned!" he exclaimed when he could breathe again.

"Told you so," said Beka in a smug, pleased tone.

"Beka," Dylan Hunt said by way of greeting the new arrivals.

"I don't suppose that you might explain where this came from, any time soon?"

Both of the new arrivals turned as one and Beka replied. "Dylan, I thought you'd never ask."

"It's from the past, more to the point, it's from Old Earth's past."

"Come again. It's probably as ancient as you are."

Trance and Tyr were also waiting, and Tyr broke into the conversation. "While Captain Valentine is correct in stating that ship is from the past, she left out one crucial detail."

"Spoilsport," Beka griped. "I was working up to that part, you know, pausing for dramatic impact."

Tyr nodded. "An accident caused by an ion storm caused our slipfighters to be knocked off-course during a mission, and instead of crash-landing on the planet that was our  
destination we arrived in Earth, an Earth from the past."

"They called it Roswell," Beka added, shrugging, "Whatever that is. They seemed to like me, well, with Tyr, they wanted to give the third degree. Oddly enough, they did not seem to take kindly to  
aliens, or rather genetically modified humans; she grinned and tilted her head to one side as if thinking that matter over once again. "I guess, I can't blame them, Tyr did not a shine to them either, so I guess it was mutual."

"The point being, is that given the level of technology possessed by these ancient Terrans, never could concieved yet alone built a ship like this."

"Roswell!" Harper exclaimed.

"Yeah, not really forte when it came to Old Earth history," Harper paused and then added.

"But I've heard tell of it, in fact, my cousin Brendan used to read accounts of alien  
contact that took place there."

"Which might explain the presence of the alien space ship," Tyr nodded.

"Yes, but what happened to its crew?" Dylan asked.

"Who knows?" Beka shrugged. "Maybe they died in the crash, maybe they couldn't take exposure to the planet's atmosphere, who cares? The point is is that baby is capable of time  
travel!"

"I would venture that the crew put up a fight, but were overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers, if nothing else."

Dylan shook his head. "I got a bad feeling about this. Something just does not jive here. During the Commonwealth there were any number of studies and databases chronicling the possiblity of time travel and even ships capable of producing it; but to my knowledge no one ever perfected it."

"If there," Harper agreed, "It usually only came about through sheer accident."

"And most of the time, you could only go backwards in time not forwards," the ship's holo-avatar chimed in via the inter ship communication ship. "And might I add, that those who did  
manage to travel back in time discovered that it is only real practical application was for academic research."

Trance shook her head, a frown creasing the skin of her smooth purple-hued forward. She was worried, confused, somehow, the presence of this ship, in this time line was wrong, not wrong  
so much in the dangerous sense, but wrong, as if somehow the natural order of things were unraveling like a strand constantly being pulled away from a garment until the whole thing came apart.

In a way that not even her friends and companions understood, not that she understood much herself; Trance thought,"We are only borrowing trouble, and when troubles come, they do not  
come as single spies but in battalions."

The ships that jumped into the slipstream where like none other that most of the worlds that survived the fall of the Old Common Wealth had ever seen; although there were more  
than a passing resemblance to the traditional design of the High Guard slip fighter; silver hulls, swept-back curves, needle-nosed prows, but that was were the resemblance  
ended. These ships were darker, and the crews that piloted them were bulky, heavy-set bipeds were sloping brows and heavy-lidded deep-set black eyes.

In a time long past, one that no one living now could remember, there race had dominated the galaxy with their advanced technology and weaponry; especially their civilization's  
proudest achievement, a space ship, that not only was capable of traveling through the vaucum of space in sublight, slipstream, but time itself.

They had felt themselves to have mastered time and space, but time had betrayed them, and  
their civilization had crumbled, leaving them easy prey for the other species of the galaxy, and eventually, most everyone assumed that their race had died out, leaving nothing behind but  
legends and crumbling ruins; and then nothing.

Centuries had passed but the Icarnians, at least a handful had survived and now they were back to reclaim what they felt, rightfully or not, what was belonged to them.

The commander of the lead ship stood on the bridge, feet planted squarely on the floor,arms folded over his massive barrel chest, staring out at the vast canopy of the stars.  
"Nothing will stop us, nothing. Too much is at stake."

The proximity alarm klaxons sounded as soon as the Andromeda's long range sensors detected unknown star ships coming out of slipstream.

Dylan, whether he was consciously aware of it or not, stood on the bridge of his own ship, his pose almost equivalent to that of the unidentified hostiles approaching their position. Tyr stood behind the weapons console array, his expression not betraying by even an iota what might be going on behind that bland exterior; but that was the least of Dylan Hunt's worries at the moment.

The remainder of his crew, along with Trance who had hung back and now leaned up against the wall, had joined him in the mad dash to the promise moments after the proximiity alarms  
had begun to go off.

"Let's take a look at what we're up against," remarked Dylan with a wry grin.

The ship's holo-avatar accomodate and the forward view screen flickered into live, showing a wedge-shaped formation of unknown alien ships closing on them, and to Dylan's way of thinking  
it looked as much like a horde of locusts swarming over a field of crops. He shook his head to clear it of the disturbing mental image; and concentrated on the task at hand.

"Hail them," ordered Dylan.

"Yes, Sir," replied Rommie.

A moment later she said: "Sir, they are refusing to acknowledge our hail. Instead, am I receiving a message, audio only."

"Play it back."

On the audio relay, a gruff voice uttered: "Return what is rightfully ours and we will be merciful and not leave your ship floating, dead in space. Refuse, and you will be atomized.  
Your choice. You have thirty minutes to decide. That is all."

"Lovely, Beka griped. "Remind me to send them invitations to our next soiree."

"Not now, Beka," said Dylan in a warning tone.

"Maybe we should play it up. You know pretend like we don't know what they're talking about?"  
suggested Harper.

"If they're scanning us, then they will see right through that pretense for the lie that it is," remarked Tyr.

"If they haven't fired on the Andromeda," Beka added, "then that means that might want it attached. or they're bluffing."

"Unless their target isn't the Andromeda." Tyr raised an eyebrow. "Curious."

"That makes no sense," Harper shook his head.

"Has anyone noticed that those ships look a damn sight too familiar? " Beka asked as she eyed the lines of the hostile alien craft magnified on the view screen.  
"You know, like you've seen them somewhere before?"

"Now that you mention it,""" Harper trailed off, "and then snapped his fingers, "They're slipfighters!"

"Perhaps they acquired them for a salvage depot, or a dealer in High Guard decommissioned craft,' Tyr added.

"That's all speculation," Dylan said. "Right now,

Over the open audio channel the same gruff voice came on, muffled by distance and static." Time is up. Have you made a decision?"

"I need more information. If it's my ship you're after. Let me be up front with you, Commander.. whatever your name is. You can't have it."

"The name is Commander Vaughn, and let me as plain as forthright with you as you have been with me. I want that ship currently docked in your hangar bay."

"Dylan! You can't just hand it over to them!" Beka shouted. "I went through too much to  
acquire that bridge and it was just sitting, gathering dust. Tell I claim salvage rights. He can't have it!"

"Captain Valentine," Tyr interrupted. "Under ordinary circumstances, I would agree with you.  
But is it really worth it to fight over a ship that is only in our possession by sheer accident."

Beka balled her fists and glared at everyone within sight, before she managed to compose herself long enough.

"I guess not. But I don't have to like it. And it's better than the alternative, having them blow us up."

"Then it's decided." Dylan nodded only half-paying attention to the changes that anger worked on Beka Valentine's features. In the back of his mind he thought, "It's too bad we'rew going to have to sacrifice that ship for the good of the many over the needs of the few. Is that how that old saying goes? I think it is, but I don't rightly remember. Man, I feel older than my vaunted three hundred years, maybe it's good riddance to get rid of the time ship.'

"Well, hand the ship over to you, but once we do, you'll have to agree to leave and never come back," Dylan addressed Commander Vaughn.

"Excellent" replied Commander Vaughn shortly before cutting the communication channel, "he added "We will be waiting to collect. Vaughn, out."

A day or two later Beka walked into Harper's workshop and waited for him to slide out from underneath the table that had been piled high with yet another half-finished project.

"Hi, Beka," he greeted her with his trademark wry grin plastered on his face, his wild mop of hair in disarray, but that same old devil-may care spring back in his step. "What's up, besides  
me and you?"

"Hi, yourself," Beka replied a wry grin of her own curving her lips. "I. Oh, hell. I don't know what I need anymore. I wanted to hang onto that ship like it was my baby. But I understand

why we just gave it up in order to save the Andromeda."

Harper nodded. "Some fights are just better to walk away from. Man, did you see the weapons on those babies? He whistled. "Not that I was impressed or anything, and I know we  
could have managed to blow those suckers to kingdom come, but they didn't seem the type to want to argue that matter."

"When you were studying the time ship's design specifications did you manage to save any of its tech?" Beka asked as she finger-combed through her hair.

"Some of it," Harper replied. "But if I might take a stab at your next question, than no. I don't think I got quite enough to be able to duplicate and build another ship." He shrugged. "Sorry, Boss."

Beka sighed. "That's too bad. I really had my heart set on being able to travel in time."

"Trust me," Harper sighed. "It aint' all its cracked up to be."

Beka thought about that for a few seconds and then burst out laughing, and a moment later Harper joined her.


	4. Rinse, Wash, and Repeat

Rinse, Wash, and Repeat

Harper had been tinkering with various systems upgrades and the like when Tyr burst into the Machine Lab and pinned him with a fierce glare. He d been clad only in a metal version of what Harper liked to think

of as a metallic hair-shirt which showed off the big man's muscular physique. His torso, brow and face glistened with sheen of sweat as well.

Instinctively backing up a bit to put as much distance between himself and the big man Harper said: "What seems to be the problem?"

"Whatever it is that you are doing." Tyr stated emphatically and tersely, "I do not wish to become part of your experiments. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"

"Like silicon chips on a flexie," Harper cheerfully replied."But I honestly have no idea what you re talking about."

"You must be, because I distinctly recall having this conversation with you once already today," Tyr said.

"News to me," Harper replied reassured that he was back on firmer footing and excited that there seemed to be a mystery afoot that was just begging for a Harper-sized intelligence to get to the bottom of it.

'In fact," Tyr recalled at the same time as his breathing, heart-rate and pulse all returned to normal as soon as he calmed down. "Now that you mention it, that sport Dylan insists that I participate in, has already occurred three times already."

"That can't be!" Harper exclaimed and then trailed off as he mind raced through the myriad possibilities that could have caused a case of recurring events in which the participants would experience the exact same activates, emotions, and words identical sequences. His brow furrowed and rocked back and forth on his heels while he tapped the fingers of his right hand on top of the console in front of him.

Tyr merely observed this process of Harper-cogitation with a wry smile and waited. It out.

"Unless," Harper said aloud, snapping his fingers.

"Yes, go on", Tyr replied.

"Unless, what you re describing is a kind of time dilation, once known back on Old Earth as a Groundhog Day effect."

"I do not understand", Tyr admitted.

"it's a known phenomenom where the events play out over and over again", Harper replied. "Odd, that only you and Dylan have experienced this? Has anyone else aboard the ship experienced similar effects of time dilation?"

"Beka, no one else." Tyr replied.

Harper nodded and said. "That does figure. It could have something to do with residual effects from the time ship. We got rid of it, so that might not be the cause."

"Agreed," Tyr replied.

"Or, as you surmised before you stormed into my Machine Shop, the time dilation experiments I've been conducting to rid myself of the creepy-crawlies in my gut, Harper mused, but that really is n t important right now."

"Harper", Tyr prodded, knowing that the acting ship's engineer was not nearly as sanguine as he might wish to appear or sound regarding the Magog larva in his stomach and while he wished the little professor as he referred to Harper; at the moment it was important to keep him on task.

"I can have Rommie run a complete diagnostic of the ships systems, time-dilation or notwithstanding. In most cases the groundhog effect wears itself out, but not before you get sick and tired of having the same conversations over and over again.""

"Terrific," Tyr muttered. "Why do you seem unaffected?".

"Because I've been stuck in here and probably because I've been tinkering with my own phase modulation energy projector," Harper replied/Tyr shook his head and said, half mock-severely; "I am afraid that I only understand half of what you just said. I am sorry I asked. Let us be clear on this point, you do not seem to be affected, it is equally doubtful that Rommie would be. What do the rest of us do in order to break the cycle?"

"Play it out," Harper replied, "once you do it say for more than three times in a row you then find a place where the pattern differs and that should snap you out of it. It s kinda like following a trail of bread crumbs."

"Bread crumbs," Tyr muttered. "Interesting metaphor. I will return to report the results of my efforts. In the meantime I would strongly suggest shutting down your device until further notice."

"Sure, sure," Harper waved as Tyr departed the Machine Shop. "Not a problem." ***


End file.
